UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Will a Texas tandem leads Congress to a border breakthrough?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: A new bipartisan bill aims to make it easier to deport them.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They`ve cracked the code and they`ve figured out this gap in this 2008 law.

ANDREA MITCHELL, MSNBC HOST: Is this legislation dead on arrival?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You`ll see the Congress give some money.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Not quite the amount that President Obama wants.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Meanwhile, the pope is now weighing in.

BRIAN WILLIAMS, MSNBC HOST: The pope called for urgent intervention.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: "This humanitarian emergency requires, as a first urgent measure, these children be welcomed and protected."

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is at first a humanitarian crisis.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Immigration activist Jose Antonio Vargas --

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: One of the maybe best-known undocumented immigrants in the United States --

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: -- has been detained by border agents while trying to board a plane in McAllen, Texas.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He felt motivated to go down there and really lend his voice to these undocumented minors.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He was released from Border Control custody late today.

MITCHELL: Before Congress goes home, don`t they have to do something?

(MUSIC PLAYING)

O`DONNELL: Immigration activist and Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Jose Antonio Vargas has been released tonight by immigration authorities in McAllen, Texas, after being detained at the airport. Vargas has been living and working in the United States without the benefit of legal immigrant status.

As he tried to leave McAllen today, Vargas tweeted, "About to go through security at McAllen Airport. I don`t know what`s going to happen," along with a picture of his passport which is from the Philippines.

The Border Patrol obviously controls people entering McAllen from the south across the Mexican border and at the airport, but it also checks people who are leaving McAllen and heading north, heading deeper into the United States, with checkpoints about an hour outside of the city and of course at the airport.

This was apparently not something Jose Antonio Vargas was aware of before he went to McAllen. Once there, he realized that leaving McAllen could be a problem.

McAllen is one of several cities where Department of Homeland Security officials are rushing to open more detention centers like this warehouse to hold some of the 52,000 children who have been caught crossing the U.S. border since October.

Homeland Security also wants to expand the use of monitoring devices like ankle bracelets to keep track of migrants after they are released. But immigrants continue to come into the U.S. This is what NBC`s Mark Potter found just outside McAllen two days ago.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MARK POTTER, NBC NEWS CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): It doesn`t take long to find a group of immigrants who have crossed the Rio Grande.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: How are you doing?

POTTER (voice-over): They are all women and kids from Honduras. Among them, 7-year-old Amy, a nervous little girl, who says she`s traveling without relatives, hoping to find her mother in the United States.

When asked where she lives, she shows the agents a piece of paper that indicates her mom is in North Carolina.

A few miles away in an area called Devil`s Corner, we run into a larger group that seems exhausted from their 10-day journey.

O`DONNELL: In Arizona, there were more protests against those immigrants crossing that border today. A crowd of 300 evenly split between supporters and protesters waited for undocumented immigrants to arrive at a holding facility in Oracle, Arizona, where they will be cared for until they can go through the legal process to determine if they can stay in the United States or if they will have to go home.

And today Pope Francis released a letter about the treatment of immigrants.

"Many people forced to emigrate suffer and often die tragically, many of their rights are violated. They are obliged to separate from their families and unfortunately continue to be the subject of racist and xenophobic attitudes.

"I would also like to draw attention to the thousands of children who migrate alone, unaccompanied, to escape poverty and violence. This is a category of migrants from Central America and Mexico itself, who cross the border with the United States under extreme conditions and in pursuit of a hope that, in most cases, turns out to be in vain.

"They are increasing day by day. This humanitarian emergency requires as a first urgent measure these children be welcomed and protected. These measures, however, will not be sufficient unless they are accompanied by policies that inform people about the dangers of such a journey and, above all, that promote development in their countries of origin."

The Catholic bishop of Ft. Worth said this in McAllen today.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BISHOP MICHAEL OLSON, DIOCESE OF FT. WORTH: I just also would like to speak to all of the Catholics first of all, those in the Diocese of Ft. Worth, but also I think in solidarity with Bishop Farrell and with all the other bishops in the United States to remind all of us, especially Catholics, of our responsibility to care for those who are in need, to care for the refugees, to assist them, to assist them, at the very least, for safety from violence and injustice and also to promote the basic human needs of each and every human person for no other reason than they`re human beings.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

O`DONNELL: Bishop Michael Olson joins me now.

Bishop, thank you very much for joining us tonight.

Were you surprised by the pope entering this debate today?

OLSON: No, I wasn`t. I don`t think the pope actually entered the debate as much as he was exercising his teaching office. And I think that the debate just sort of swirls around it. Unfortunately, I think oftentimes the debate is just simply on strictly partisan principles instead of a sense of facing the humanitarian crisis that`s urgently before us right now so that we can apply these principles practically later on in resolving the issues in these native countries from which these people are fleeing violence and danger.

And I think he`s drawing attention to the higher purpose of this than simply the status quo.

O`DONNELL: Bishop, as we all know the television cameras are always drawn to the protesters and to the noisiest people on any subject publicly.

But being on the ground yourself in Texas, tell us the range of reaction that you have seen from what you consider good to what you consider not so good from the people of Texas.

OLSON: Well, I honestly have to say that most of the response from the people of Texas has been -- that I`ve encountered has been very favorable, very supportive, wanting to help and wanting to help realistically.

These people, first of all, they welcome these children, keep them safe and then, in a sense, delaying the question of what is the appropriate due process to handle the question of deportation, as well as to respect the common good and the necessity of having a border that has integrity.

We have to look at the deeper reasons. And I found that people have been very accessible and wanting to help these children and keep them safe from immediate harm.

I think also you`ll find extreme people who are more idealists in the sense that either they think that we should have a naive approach and just have open borders, which isn`t what the church is saying or the pope is saying, or a cynical approach, in which case we should not have any entrance from the borders from immigrants or from refugees at all and do nothing and just simply send them back while abandoning our responsibility to care for those who are weakest and most vulnerable among us.

O`DONNELL: Bishop, what has the church been able to do in Texas in the face of this crisis?

OLSON: A wide variety of things. I`ll speak for Catholic Charities of the Diocese of Ft. Worth. We`ve been able to collaborate with government officials, both local and federal. In fact, we don`t take any of the refugees until they`ve been delivered to us by the government buses. And then we`re working with the Office of Refugee Resettlement, as well as FEMA.

We`ve doubled our bed space at Catholic Charities Ft. Worth and have processed in the last six weeks 200 children, all under the age of 13. And prospects look that we`ll process about 600 by the end of the year. And this is to resettle them with their parents.

And then the question, if not their parents or their family members, under care and safety. And then the question of deportation or immigration is forestalled to later.

So what we`re basically doing right now is meeting the immediate urgent basic needs, the first part of what the Holy Father has asked us to do, and then also calling in mind what do we do internationally in this -- to resolve this complicated problem at its root.

And we`re very happy to exercise our religious freedom in serving the poorest of the poor and welcoming the immigrant and the refugee and caring for these children, who are most vulnerable and in need, and we`re working within the rule of law and in collaboration with our government officials.

O`DONNELL: Bishop Michael Olson, thank you very much for joining us tonight.

Joining me now is immigration activist Cristina Jimenez, managing director of United We Dream, and MSNBC contributor E.J. Dionne.

Cristina, Jose Antonio Vargas, there`s a -- some of the information around his situation isn`t exactly clear. You know him. One thing I want to clarify is before he want to McAllen, Texas, did he know that there could be a problem in leaving McAllen?

CRISTINA JIMENEZ, MANAGING DIRECTOR, UNITED WE DREAM: He didn`t know, Lawrence and United We Dream, the organization that I work with, invited Jose Antonio to be part of the activities that we were going to have in McAllen, with joint community in McAllen and immigrant youth who wanted to shed light on the real stories of these children that are fleeing Central America.

And we held a vigil to call on Congress, the president and the American public to have a conversation about this humanitarian crisis in a way that focuses on the well-being of the children as opposed to politicizing the conversation.

O`DONNELL: But it seems he went to the airport today with -- if I`m reading the situation correctly -- the deliberate intent of having this confrontation with the Border Patrol.

JIMENEZ: Well, he`s not from Texas. He lives in New York and he needed to head out to Los Angeles, as he`s promoting his documentary, which is called "Documented."

And he attempted to leave McAllen through the airport and that`s when Border Patrol detained him today.

O`DONNELL: But just so I understand how things go in McAllen, would it have been easier for him to drive out of McAllen and drive the distance to the next airport that could get him out of Texas?

JIMENEZ: No, Lawrence. The area of McAllen -- and this is what we`re trying to now share with the viewers -- is that that particular area is in a 100-mile area that is completely militarized. There are checkpoints everywhere. There`s a checkpoint at the airport; there`s a checkpoint in all of the roads.

So if you`re in McAllen and you`re undocumented, like Jose Antonio, you cannot leave. You cannot go to San Antonio or Houston or any other city because you`re going to have to go through a checkpoint that it`s controlled by Border Patrol.

And like him, we have thousands of undocumented youth and families that have never been able to leave McAllen because of this situation. They are trapped in this area.

O`DONNELL: E.J. Dionne, I learn something new every day in this situation. I didn`t know that you could in effect be under municipal arrest in the United States and not be able to leave a city in the United States to travel wherever else you wanted to go in the United States.

In San Diego, for example, in California, Mexico border, you could drive out of San Diego; there`s nothing that`s going to prevent you from doing that on all sorts of freeways, all sorts of different routes. But this is one of those things, where, as this story moves along, we continue to learn new things about just how difficult life is on that border.

E.J. DIONNE, "THE WASHINGTON POST": Right. Well, I think that -- and I didn`t know this myself, so I learned it as well. And I think for people who say we`re not tending the border, we`re sort of letting all these people through to find out just how much security, how militarized it is, to use my colleague`s word, tells us something about immigration control.

But the story is also showing us something else and I was very moved by Stephanie Gosk`s (ph) piece last night on your show and watching those children and seeing what they`re going through.

And I was just very happy that the pope spoke out today, because I thought there were two things he said that were really important. He referred to it as a humanitarian emergency.

We`re talking about this as a political border crisis and you look at these 6- and 9-year-old kids and you said what`s happened to us as a compassionate country?

I agree it`s a complicated problem to decide what to do. But there`s been some real meanness here and that`s why I was also glad that the pope specifically called out racist and xenophobic attitudes. Again, immigration`s complicated; we`re not going to have open borders the way we had when you -- our ancestors came here, but God, let`s have some compassion for kids who are going through so much, as Stephanie`s story showed.

O`DONNELL: Yes, E.J., that`s an important part of the story. It`s why I wanted to have Ron last night as exactly -- is that the route that these people are traveling, by the time they get to us, some of the heroics that they`ve gone through and the determination they`ve shown, I think, is evidence, as it has been in previous waves of immigration, of just how determined they are to succeed once they get here.

DIONNE: Right. And I think as you pointed out last night, that`s true of all of our ancestors who risked so much to get here. And I don`t think there`s any doubt that the United States is a stronger country for being an immigrant country.

And again, the bishop, as he said earlier, we`re not going to have open borders anytime soon. So we are going to be turning people away. And as soon as you do that, you raise some very complicated issues.

But we were really sort of patting ourselves on the back when we passed that law, the Wilberforce Act, to try to help the victims of sex trafficking and we said this is the kind of thing that makes us a good country. And I`d really like us to show ourselves as a good country in dealing with these kids now and I hope the attitudes change a little bit.

I hope the pope has a bit of an effect on the way this story is talked about.

O`DONNELL: Cristina Jimenez and E.J. Dionne, thank you both very much for joining me tonight.

JIMENEZ: Thank you.

DIONNE: Good to be with you, Lawrence.

O`DONNELL: Yes.

Coming up, Chris Christie`s team posted a video online today, portraying him as a movie superhero -- seriously. But unfortunately someone on Team Christie realized how just totally muddy the video is and they took it down, but not before we made our copy.

And in the rewrite, a Republican congresswoman says, communicating the Republican message to women is easy if you can, quote, "bring it down to a woman`s level," end quote. You don`t have to take my word for it. We will play you the audio recording.

And later, Amelia Earhart finally does make it around the world.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

O`DONNELL: Adam O`Neal, the mayor of Bell Haven, North Carolina, walked another 20 miles today on his 273-mile journey to the nation`s capital. He appeared on this program last night after his first 17 miles of marching to draw attention to the closing of critical access hospitals in his town.

Up next, the movie version of Chris Christie and you know how in the movies when real-life characters are played by actors who are just much more attractive than the real-life character? Yes, well, they didn`t make that mistake in the Christie movie.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

O`DONNELL: The summer movie season of transforming robots, mutant superheroes and apes on horses got a new entry today: Chris Christie, the movie.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

GOV. CHRIS CHRISTIE (R), N.J.: The looming crisis is clear. We can no longer stand around and say, it`s not a problem. Don`t worry about it.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE (voice-over): This summer, from the makers of --

CHRISTIE: Together, we`ve begun to clean up the mess of the past. Pensions, health benefits and death service.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE (voice-over): When you thought it was over --

CHRISTIE: We`re in a danger of having peace cross overwhelm our budget.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE (voice-over): It`s back.

CHRISTIE: We need to fix this system or it will eat us alive.

Choosing to do what`s hard. Choosing to do what is right by all of the people of this state.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE (voice-over): How far would you go?

CHRISTIE: There is no other way to fix a severe problem like this without pain.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE (voice-over): Hang onto your seats.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

O`DONNELL: That`s actually the entire movie. And I`m going to give you a minute to think about whether that little film was made by supporters or opponents of Chris Christie.

While we consider another video about Chris Christie, this one an ad clearly targeting Chris Christie as he heads to Iowa this week for a series of fundraisers.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE (voice-over): New Jersey`s Supreme Court has been one of the most activist courts in the nation. Governor Chris Christie promised he would fix it. Remake the court with judges who respect the rule of law.

Over and over, he broke his promise. Christie has had five openings on the New Jersey Supreme Court, enough to build a new majority. But the court remains liberal.

Call Chris Christie. Tell him to fight for judges who respect the rule of law.

When we showed that the movie trailer thing in our office today, half of the people watching it thought that was an anti-Christie ad and half thought it was supporting Christie. It was made by Christie`s people. They posted it and they took it down tonight because someone over there in Christie World unfortunately realized just how nutty it is.

CORN: Well, it seems to me if they were making a movie about his presidential campaign, they would have to call it "Twilight."

But this one, if they`re sticking to the budget, they can call it "Other People`s Money." The thing is, he just signed the budget. The budget is $32 billion in New Jersey and the only thing that got it through was because he refused to raise taxes on the wealthy.

And instead, took $1.6 billion that was supposed to go to pensions and decided, hey, I`m not going to make that payment. Meanwhile, I can borrow a bridge loan of $2.6 billion.

So anything that calls attention to Christie and the budget right now in New Jersey, a state that`s one of the last in terms of job creation, is probably not a good idea, whether it`s a movie trailer, a commercial or any -- you want to sort of be in the back of the movie theater, the lights out if you`re talking about Chris Christie and his budget.

O`DONNELL: Yes. And the other ad that we saw of -- from the Republican world attacking Christie. This is the kind of thing that I for one always knew was coming as soon as he tried to move out into the world of presidential campaigning and before we even get to any ads about what`s happened in the bridge scandal, where they can quote him saying, you know, I trusted my staff; I delegate everything to my staff and they betrayed me and humiliated me.

Before we get to any of that, there`s stuff like this, there`s this very rich material that they have among conservative voters about Christie with the courts and all sorts of other things.

CORN: Oh, yes. Before we got to the George Washington bridge comedy, this was the movie that we were expecting. The Tea Party folks in Iowa, South Carolina, a lot of places out there, a lot of early primary states, would have a field day with his non-far-to-the-right record.

As conservative as Chris Christie is then on many fronts, he`s still not conservative enough for them and, of course, he worked with the president after the Sandy superstorm and on a few other matters. And so we were expecting all this talk about the establishment Republicans and people like Bill Kristol in D.C. and funders like the Koch brothers putting him up as a candidate, that he would run into this wall of opposition in Iowa, from people like this group, which is led by a former aide to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.

So I guess they are all trying to make a name for themselves early on. I don`t think they have to do a lot to smother Chris Christie`s presidential prospects at this point in time, but I assume it`s good for fundraising for the group that`s attacking him, being known as the first group to do this.

O`DONNELL: Well, on this program, his presidential prospects have been zero for many, many months now. That`s the official judgment of the anchor desk here.

CORN: It`s not box office boffo, is it?

O`DONNELL: At this particular anchor desk, the results are in on the Chris Christie presidential campaign.

David Corn, thank you very much for joining me tonight.

CORN: Sure thing, Lawrence.

O`DONNELL: Thank you.

Coming up, President Obama started a program this year called My Brother`s Keeper, which has brought renewed attention to an Oakland, California, program that provides brotherly and fatherly guidance to some public school students there. That`s next.

BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: As a black student, you are far less likely than a white student to be able to read proficiently by the time you are in fourth grade. There`s a higher chance you end up in the criminal justice system. And a far higher chance that you are the victim of a violent crime.

The worst part is, we`ve become numb to these statistics. But these statistics should break our hearts. I would want my son to feel a sense of boundless confidence and want him to have empathy and compassion. I want him to have a sense of diligence and commitment and a respect for others and himself. The tools that he would need to succeed.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

O`DONNELL: That was President Obama earlier this year, announcing his new initiative my brother`s keeper.

Four years ago, school officials in Oakland, California started their own program to address the challenges President Obama described calling it the African-American male achievement office. They hired new teachers to mix academic skills and college preparation with cultural awareness, proper behavior and lessons and surviving on the street. The program has achieved a decrease in suspension rates and increase in the average GPA and graduation rates of its students.

MSNBC.com describe some of the elements of the program this way. For at least one period during each school day, middle and high school boys, who are part of the program, file into classrooms where they`re greeted by black male instructors. For about an hour, they can drop the masks so many of them wear and be their complicated, hopeful, sometimes wounded selves. The so-called manhood development program teaches self-respect and personal accountability and responsibility.

The boys read many of the classics of black American literature allowed, including the autobiography of Malcolm X, the work of Richard Wright. They learn how to tie a necktie and set goals. They can open up about their fears of gun violence as openly as they can about the day-to-day frustrations of home or school life. The instructors also work as go-betweens for the boys and their other teachers when a student is struggling or missing classes. The mentors are often the first line of defense.

Joining me now is Trymaine Lee, national reporter for MSNBC.com who wrote about the program and mark Thompson, host if Sirius XM radio`s "Make it Plain."

Trymaine, your article, I just read an excerpt of it, it is fascinating. A lot of very compelling anecdotes here by parents, by mothers saying how important it is to have these men in their children`s lives.

TRYMAINE LEE, NATIONAL REPORTER, MSNBC.COM: So much of the narrative we hear around the demographic, we hear about the pathologist, we hear about the gun violence, we hear about the academic and social failures, but far less frequently do we hear about the achievement, the achievements, the hopes and dreams. And sadly, so many of these young people are believing the narrative of the mythologies of the murders.

These men here in Oakland have decided that they are going to change their narratives and it starts with these young men every single day and saying good afternoon, King. They address them as kings. And these are young boys who grown up in east Oakland, one of the toughest neighborhoods in the country, came in over the west, basically and it`s working.

These young men -- and it`s about giving them choices, make them the tools that make better decisions and their choices. So sometimes it`s not reflected in the academics, but it`s going home and feeling proud about yourself. The idea that college is within grasp, the idea that I can hope my brother accountable. If I can look at you as brother, come on. You know better. And it`s a small step, but it`s major in the lives of these young men.

O`DONNELL: And Mark, if you question the need for this kind of program, the evidence is in this -- they are asked -- the students are asked to list three words, they do this every year at the start of the school year, three words that describe what it`s like being a young black male in America. The lists have included scared, hiding, survival, underestimated, underappreciated, alone, feared, not respected.

And Mark, as Trymaine`s article points out, when these boys find themselves in a room, authoritatively controlled by a black man who is clearly there to help them, they seem to respond to it very strongly.

MARK THOMPSON. HOST, SIRIUS XM RADIO: That is very important. First of all, Lawrence, so thankful to see you back in a chair and thankful to see you growing a beard.

O`DONNELL: Thanks, Mark.

THOMPSON: That`s true. This is a very important program. When Valerie Jarrett came on my show, she pledged that the My Brother`s Keeper initiative would be what the president would do after he left office. This is probably the most urgent thing he could do, because we need intervention in the lives of our young black men.

I was watching the story just about the border children. As tragic as that is, it a terrible situation. Those are child refugees. When you think about it, a lot of these young, black men are refugees themselves within our own country, internally displaced because of all the socioeconomic challenges they face, racism, and what have you. We have to do this. We have to intervene, even as we struggle through some hardships.

I just had a very close relative of mine last night, Lawrence, held up at gun point by two young black men. And while we would want those types of situations brought to justice, even before we get to that point, we must do something to address what young black men are experiencing here in America. Very little has changed. Many of our young black men still feel the invisibility that Ralph Ellison was talking about and the amused contented (ph) voice was talking about.

O`DONNELL: Whenever you have a program in schools, everyone wants to measure it numerically, they want to measure it with grades. They want to stay it`s a success based on some kind of a numerical outcome.

I want to read a message from your article, Trymaine, that I think shows a kind of success you`re not going to be able to put a number on. Nicole Wiggins remembers the first day that her 16-year-old son came home after taking his first manhood development classes. He ran into the house yelling about his great black teacher that he had and his classmates and all the conversations they were having. He said he finally found a class where I can be myself and I can be who I am.

Wiggins said to hear him say that was so powerful. To have a man showing him love and care and telling him, you can be better, you can do this and teaching him, telling him that he can do better, it really had an impact on him.

LEE: The idea that these young men have to wear a mask, and it`s difficult to find a place where they can be themselves. And they find in the classrooms, they look across the table and see a black man saying you can do that, and I believe in you. I don`t think we understand what it`s like to live in a society where -- well, some of us do, that you feel like you`re under attack, that you have to put on a mask to protect yourselves, because nothing is very firm in you and everything seems so fragile.

And so a look that mother in her eye, and her voice next to him says, he finally found a place where he can be himself. And what that does for a young man`s confidence, to go into a classroom and say I can do this because you believe in me. I mean, it`s working wonders here. And again, it is a small incremental gain. It may not reflect in the GPA all the time, but it is -- they come into (INAUDIBLE), I am ready to give my full self and I can be myself and I appreciate it.

O`DONNELL: And Mark, this is the kind of thing that makes a situation like the Trayvon Martin case such a cultural setback, because you have these boys in these classes who are going through this, who are slowly opening up in this way, and they do feel like suspects whenever they walk down the street. And then they see something like this happening on the other side of the country, and it`s the kind of thing that can set them back.

THOMPSON: Well, you`re exactly right. We after all are still talking about children. And they watch us as adults. And they want to know that we are there to provide for them, to defend them, and protect them. If we aren`t doing that, if they see it, if they don`t perceive that, if they don`t see black male adults, African-American male adults, whether they`re biological fathers or not, intervening in their lives, standing up, setting those examples, letting them know they will protect them and their rights, then they do get discouraged. And that leads to getting up and leads to despair and it leads to a lot of the socioeconomic problems that we see every day.

O`DONNELL: Mark Thompson, thanks for joining us. And Traymaine Lee, great reporting. Great piece, really. Great to have you on the show tonight.

LEE: Thank you very much.

O`DONNELL: Thank you.

Coming up in the rewrite tonight, a Republican congresswoman actually tries to teach Republicans how to speak to women voters, and it went so badly that she is now, of course, complaining that she was quoted out of context. Well, we will play you the audio recording of what she said. You will be the judge.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

O`DONNELL: And now for the good news. 8-year-old Dylan Sparing (ph) of Minneapolis put out a sign on his front yard advertising a free piano concert on his front porch. Musician Tommy Ribbons (ph) saw the sign and decided to help drum up an audience. Tommy created a facebook page advertising the recital. Wouldn`t it be cool is a bunch of people showed up for his free concert, he asked. And they did. And estimated 200 people stood out in the rain to hear Dylan play and 40,000 more watched a live stream f the concert online. Dylan is already hard at work promoting his next front porch concert.

The rewrite is next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

O`DONNELL: In the rewrite tonight, what happens when a Republican congresswoman tries to explain to her fellow Republicans how to win the hearts and minds of women voters? Well, what happened first is she got a very bad review in the conservative Washington examiner, under the headline, the Republican plan to change the war on women narrative needs work.

Republican congresswoman Renee Ellmers of North Carolina was not pleased at how she was quoted in that article, especially the line about how you can successfully communicate political ideas to women only, quote, "if you can bring it down to a woman`s level," end quote.

In a statement, Ellmers claimed that her comments were taken completely out of context. She said, I am a woman and I find it offensive and sexist to take my words and redefine them and imply that women need to be addressed at a lower level.

She blamed certain leftist writers who were trying to trap her in gotcha journalism. (INAUDIBLE), the writer who gave her the bad review in the Washington examiner, previously worked at the conservative heritage foundation and she now works at a conservative newspaper that is not in the business of making trouble for Republicans. She also has an audio recording of what the congresswoman actually said.

And so, you can be the judge of just how out of context that quote is. Here she is talking to a group of women about how to talk to women.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

REP. RENEE ELLMERS (R), NORTH CAROLINA: Think about what many of you are doing, you know, you`re trying to maintain that job, you know, you`ve got to be moving up in your career. All these different things are coming in at the same time.

Men do tend to talk about things on a much higher level. You know, one of the things that has always been one of my frustrations and I speak about this all the time - many of my male colleagues, when they go to the House floor, you know, they`ve got some pie chart or graph behind them and they`re talking about trillions of dollars and, you know, how the debt is awful and, you know, we all agree with that.

But by starting off that discussion that way, we`ve already turned people away. Because it`s like that doesn`t affect my life, I don`t understand how that affects my life

So one of the things that we have worked with, with our male colleagues - and I have seen a difference, I will tell you I`ve seen a difference - is to again, engaging individuals on their level. Talking about them on a personal level first. Making sure that when we speak to individuals, we`re coming from the perspective that we care about what`s happening in your life. We know that these things - that the agenda of the Obama administration, the Obama economy, has been hurting you and your family consistently. Obamacare is hurting your family.

And then starting to talk about the solutions. One of the things - and you heard this from all of my colleagues - women are wanting commonsense solutions. Stop the no, no, no, we`re against, we`re against, we`re against. Tell us what you are for.

That`s what women want to hear. Tell us how you`re going to fix it.

The biggest need that women have is more time. We all want more time in our lives. More time in the morning to get ready. More time in the evening to spend time with our families. All of these things - more time to move up that career path. It`s about time. And we have to make sure that women understand that we understand that.

We need our male colleagues to understand that if you can bring it down to a woman`s level and what everything that she is balancing in her life - that`s the way to go.

And many of our male colleagues are starting something that I think is very important: Utilizing - especially when we`re talking about the war on women - they are saying, you know I have a wife, I have daughters, I have a mother, I have sisters - if there`s a war on women, I`m losing it.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

O`DONNELL: The most encouraging thing Congressman Ellmers told her audience was this --

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ELLMERS: Women, by and large, agree with us on all of the issues. If you go through each issue, they agree.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

O`DONNELL: Then what could the problem possibly be? If women agree with Republicans on all of the issues, then why did they vote overwhelmingly for Barack Obama? Twice?

Well, let`s see. Women do not agree with Republicans on abortion. Women do not agree with Republicans on gun control. Women do not agree with Republicans on taxes. Women do not agree with Republicans on immigration reform. Women do not agree with Republicans on climate change. Women do not agree with Republicans on raising the minimum wage.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ELLMERS: Tone matters. How you speak to people matters.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

O`DONNELL: Well, yes, that`s true. But there is no way Republicans can manipulate their tones to make women who disagree with them on so many issues than vote for them. Even if you can bring it down to a woman`s level.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ELLMERS: We need our male colleagues to understand that if you can bring it down to a woman`s level and what everything that she is balancing in her life - that`s the way to go.

O`DONNELL: Well, that part of Amelia Earhart`s last flight was successful. She has inspired countless female pilots, including Amelia Rose Earhart, who just completed a flight around the world following the 1937 Amelia Earhart`s intended route. The 17-day trip brought Amelia Rose Earhart to 14 cities in 17 different countries. Earhart shared photos of the trip on her twitter page.

Joining me now is Amelia Rose Earhart.

And so Amelia, Amelia Earhart is your what? What is your family relation to her?

AMELIA ROSE EARHART, PILOT: So there is no family relation. I`m a namesake of Amelia`s, named after her because of her passion for adventure.

O`DONNELL: But it is not a very common name. I would think almost all Earharts would be able to trace somewhere back there a connection.

EARHART: You would think. And you know, we`ve tried with multiple genealogists. It was only the oral tradition in my family that there was a connection. But about a year ago, I realized that there wasn`t. And you know, there is at one point, just no real reason to keep searching because I was so inspired by just the name and learning from what he did while she was still alive. And she really drove me towards flight.

O`DONNELL: So, you obviously with your name, you`ve obviously known about her your whole life and I assume you probably have this ambition to follow her path around the world.

EARHART: I did. I started flying about ten years ago. And every single day of my life, people would ask me, are you pilot, number one? And could you ever fly around the world? So the more I started thinking about it, and the more I grew into my own career and my skills as a pilot, I thought that would be a pretty great way to show the world that anything is possible when it comes to aviation. And also show folks within aviation and outside of it just how far we`ve come technology wise, because we can have GPS, synthetic vision, all the technology that Amelia needed to complete that flight but never had.

O`DONNELL: And so were you stopping and sleeping somewhere overnight or did you just keep the plane going as much as possible?

EARHART: We did stop and sleep every night in each city. And we flew between about six and 10 hours a day. So it was pretty a rigorous schedule, but we would stop in each city, drive anywhere from an hour to hour and a half to a local hotel and wake up the next morning at sun rise. And it was very important to me that we saw every sun rise all the way around the globe. And fortunately, we were able to accomplish that.

O`DONNELL: And you had a co-pilot, just as Amelia Earhart had a co-pilot. I didn`t realize she had a co-pilot on that flight.

EARHART: You know, she actually didn`t. She had a navigator.

O`DONNELL: A navigator, I`m sorry. A navigator, yes.

EARHART: Exactly. And he was helping her with the celestial navigation to, you know, figure out their course, their heading. But no, she was a solo pilot. I decided to take a co-pilot along, you know, for safety reasons. It was the best bet. We weren`t trying to prove anything with this flight in terms of, you know, flying the same plane she did or do a solo mission. This was about completing and symbolically, re-creating that flight for Amelia and bringing her back to Oakland.

O`DONNELL: And there were no danger moments, the weather cooperated all the way, I hope?

EARHART: The weather cooperated beautifully. And around the equator, you know, it`s typical to have some pretty accurate afternoon thunderstorms around the convergence zones, but we were safe there. And also the (INAUDIBLE) that we were flying has no spot the entire time, no flat tires, no issues, and just a great situation overall.

O`DONNELL: Amelia Rose Earhart completes Amelia Earhart`s dream.

Thank you very much for joining us tonight, Amelia.

END

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